Art.com adds augmented reality art-viewing to its iOS app

AR has gotten quite a bit of hype but there’s a good chance you haven’t even stumbled across an ARKit use case on your iPhone yet. The reason is largely that AR just doesn’t have a ton of practical use cases, I think I just managed to find one though.

If you’re in the market for some art in your house or apartment, Art.com will now let you use AR to put digital artwork up on your wall.

The company’s ArtView feature is one of the few augmented reality features that actually adds a lot to the app it’s put in. With the ARKit-enabled tech, the artwork is accurately sized so you can get a perfect idea of how your next purchase could fit on your wall. The feature can be used for the two million pieces of art on the site and can be customized with different framing types.

The twenty-year-old Art.com has had a long, complex history, but it’s done a big shakeup of its leadership over the past couple years. At the helm of the company is CEO Kira Wampler who joined Art.com after previously heading up marketing operations at Lyft as CMO. Wampler is looking augmented reality as a way to aid the company’s e-commerce efforts, she believes that their use case could also help drive the medium in a good direction.

“You can’t only drive adoption of AR through gaming, as we’ve discovered through VR,” Wampler said in an interview with TechCrunch. “With our solution we can answer real questions for customers that align with their desires.”

In addition to its augmented ambitions, Art.com is launching a feature called Gallery Wall Designer which lets users test out how different pieces of art look in a group gallery format.

The company is looking to align itself with the latest home artwork design trend which basically involves clustering several pieces of art together. With the app update, you can now take recommendations, swap in different options, see what the combo looks like and buy the whole package.

The new app features are available now on Apple devices running iOS 10 and later.